Madame Chrysantheme — Complete eBook

These intonations in her little voice are unknown
to me; her long-drawn call in the echoing darkness
of midnight has so strange an accent, something so
unexpected and wild, that it impresses me with a dismal
feeling of far-off exile.

At last Madame Prune appears to open the door to us,
only half awake and much astonished; by way of a nightcap
she wears a monstrous cotton turban, on the blue ground
of which a few white storks are playfully disporting
themselves. Holding in the tips of her fingers,
with an affectation of graceful fright, the long stalk
of her beflowered lantern, she gazes intently into
our faces, one after another, to reassure herself
of our identity; but the poor old lady can not get
over her surprise at the sight of the mousko I am
carrying.

CHAPTER XXXVII

COMPLICATIONS

At first it was only to Chrysantheme’s guitar
that I listened with pleasure now I am beginning to
like her singing also.

She has nothing of the theatrical, or the deep, assumed
voice of the virtuoso; on the contrary, her notes,
always very high, are soft, thin, and plaintive.

She often teaches Oyouki some romance, slow and dreamy,
which she has composed, or which comes back to her
mind. Then they both astonish me, for on their
well-tuned guitars they will pick out accompaniments
in parts, and try again each time that the chords
are not perfectly true to their ear, without ever
losing themselves in the confusion of these dissonant
harmonies, always weird and always melancholy.

Usually, while their music is going on, I am writing
on the veranda, with the superb panorama before me.
I write, seated on a mat on the floor and leaning
upon a little Japanese desk, ornamented with swallows
in relief; my ink is Chinese, my inkstand, just like
that of my landlord, is in jade, with dear little
frogs and toads carved on the rim. In short, I
am writing my memoirs,—­exactly as M. Sucre
does downstairs! Occasionally I fancy I resemble
him—­a very disagreeable fancy.

It is true that a complete imbroglio, worthy of a
romance, seems ever threatening to appear upon my
monotonous horizon; a regular intrigue seems ever
ready to explode in the midst of this little world
of mousmes and grasshoppers: Chrysantheme in
love with Yves; Yves with Chrysantheme; Oyouki with
me; I with no one. We might even find here, ready
to hand, the elements of a fratricidal drama, were
we in any other country than Japan; but we are in
Japan, and under the narrowing and dwarfing influence
of the surroundings, which turn everything into ridicule,
nothing will come of it all.